Action Research Teams

You're invited to follow the progress of the five ARTs as they engage in action research to improve accountability practices. A brief summary of each project is below. Simply click on the team's name to access more detailed descriptions, photos, and updates of their activities.

Alberta

Bow Valley Community College Calgary, AB
Audrey Gardner, Project Manager

Contact Audrey for more information: agardner@bowvalleycollege.ca

The Alberta team will create a tool to assess mutual accountability between the funder and two literacy programs. Focusing on the relationship between the funder and provider, the team hopes that the assessment tool can be used by both partners as a way to improve communication, clarify expectations, refine procedures, and address issues related to capacity and indicators of success.

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Follow the progress of the Alberta project

British Columbia

Storyteller’s Foundation
Hazelton, BC
Mel Sondergaard, Project Manager

Contact Mel for more information: melanie@upperskeena.ca

Organizations in the rural community of Hazelton are using a community development approach for literacy development. This less formal approach to learning that is not always identified as literacy work, but which is successful in engaging participation, is a challenging venue in which to measure literacy outcomes. In this project, the team will implement an outcome measures framework to identify literacy outcomes for learners involved in two community development projects. The team’s goal is to develop culturally relevant tools to measure learner progress in programs and activities that are not overtly academic.

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Follow the progress of the BC team
Activities completed in Fall 2008

Newfoundland and Labrador

Literacy Newfoundland and Labrador
St. John’s, NL
Caroline Vaughan, Project Manager

Contact Caroline for more information: cvaughan@literacynl.com

The provincial literacy coalition, Literacy Newfoundland and Labrador, will work with the Department of Education, Division of Adult Learning and Literacy in designing and conducting a collaborative process of stakeholder communication and involvement to contribute to the development of accountability policy and practices. This joint venture aligns with the Division’s launch of a community consultation process to create a new strategic plan for the adult literacy sector. With this project the two partners will examine and address critical issues in accountability such as: “Who is accountable for what, to whom, and to what purpose?" The partners hope that their work together will address a critical component of the accountability equation: “How do we create on-going communication and trust?”

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Follow the progress of the NL partnership

Ontario

Peterborough Native Learning Centre
Peterborough, ON
Pat Powell Owen, Project Manager

Contact Pat for more information: info@pnlp.org

Working with four Native adult literacy programs, the Peterborough team is applying recent research on key success indicators of Aboriginal schools in developing a holistic accountability framework that addresses the unique characteristics of Native literacy programs. Combining site visits, story telling at circle meetings, and interviews, the team will work with programs to evaluate their performance in 8 key success indicators. These indicators include governance and leadership, curriculum, teaching and learning, and outcomes assessment.

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Follow Peterborough's progress

Quinte Adult Day School
Belleville, ON
Marsha Roadhouse, Project Manager

Contact Marsha for more information: qads@cogeco.net

Like many adult literacy programs in Canada, the Quinte Adult Day School receives United Way funding. Their team wants to explore the adaptation of the United Way of America’s Outcome Measurement model for measuring learners' self-management/self-direction skills. They hope to inform the development of provincial measurement tools and, ideally, use the same tool to capture outcome measures for both funders.

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Check out Quinte's progress in outcome measurement

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